Club Meeting Ideas

[john.m.cole3]

I've been helping run and organize a small local reef club. we've had a few meetings and they have been lots of fun. We are concluding our first frag grow out contest and will be starting another one soon. we have had a member volunteer their house for the meeting and the admins and the host all chip in to cook some food and provide sodas. we really want this group to remain active and pique the interest of local hobbyists.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions that they have seen work well with club meetings? I was thinking about having a topic or theme each meeting...

 

[Labridaedicted]

We always used to have a member put together a presentation each month and do the meeting at a different house each month for a "tank tour. "

Local aquariums are another good option and sometimes they will provide a behind the scenes tour if you ask.

 

[jgvergo]

I'm hosting a local club meeting in a couple of weeks. Of course I will give people a tour of my DT and utility room where I have my sump. I plan to also talk about my APEX set up, which is pretty extensive. Finally, I'm going to solicit input on placing a bunch of coral frags, i.e. an "interactive" group exercise to design my tank.

 

[Labridaedicted]

We also did group buy frag lessons. We all pitched in and Bought a couple of colonies and did fragging demos. Everyone that pitched in got to take a frag home. That was a big hit at some of the meetings, too.

 

[JaimeAdams]

@john.m.cole3 how many people do you have attending your meetings? Do you guys have funds? You could join MASNA and take advantage of MASNA Speaks speaker series. Speakers can be great.

We also do a coral fragging workshop. We buy coral at discounted price and collect coral colony donations and then we teach everyone the safe way to frag different coral species and then we raffle off all of the frags. We usually make a profit.

Putting together a frag swap can be a great way to bring people together and bring revenue into a club, but that depends if you guys have enough funds and members to cover the upfront costs.

We do a behind the scenes tour of our cities aquarium. Everybody always likes that.

This month we are doing a reef tank homemade food workshop. Making frozen food to feed your entire reef tank.

Other workshops that we do are how to properly plumb an aquarium, electrical safety, fish disease, we did a DIY LED presentation.

If you have members who are very knowledgeable about certain topics you can have them do talks on those topics.

 

[john.m.cole3]

We also did group buy frag lessons. We all pitched in and Bought a couple of colonies and did fragging demos. Everyone that pitched in got to take a frag home. That was a big hit at some of the meetings, too.

That's a great idea! Thank you!

 

[john.m.cole3]

@john.m.cole3 how many people do you have attending your meetings? Do you guys have funds? You could join MASNA and take advantage of MASNA Speaks speaker series. Speakers can be great.

We also do a coral fragging workshop. We buy coral at discounted price and collect coral colony donations and then we teach everyone the safe way to frag different coral species and then we raffle off all of the frags. We usually make a profit.

Putting together a frag swap can be a great way to bring people together and bring revenue into a club, but that depends if you guys have enough funds and members to cover the upfront costs.

We do a behind the scenes tour of our cities aquarium. Everybody always likes that.

This month we are doing a reef tank homemade food workshop. Making frozen food to feed your entire reef tank.

Other workshops that we do are how to properly plumb an aquarium, electrical safety, fish disease, we did a DIY LED presentation.

If you have members who are very knowledgeable about certain topics you can have them do talks on those topics.

We have about 12 attend the meetings and 60 in the group. We have new, active members so we are expecting about 15 for this months turn out. we have not asked for money. Most of our members are novices. I was going to do a water testing tutorial and let people bring water samples for me to test this time around.

 

[JaimeAdams]

We have about 12 attend the meetings and 60 in the group. We have new, active members so we are expecting about 15 for this months turn out. we have not asked for money. Most of our members are novices. I was going to do a water testing tutorial and let people bring water samples for me to test this time around.

That is a good idea for novices. Show them how to properly test their water parameters. It would be a good idea to have suggestions on how to fix some of the issues I am sure you will find.

 

[john.m.cole3]

That is a good idea for novices. Show them how to properly test their water parameters. It would be a good idea to have suggestions on how to fix some of the issues I am sure you will find.

Right. I plan on tying that in with the talk about how our elements are related to nutrients.

 

[john.m.cole3]

I'm chatting w/ another member on fb right now and he suggested a coral donor program. where someone donates a coral to another member and that coral cannot be sold, but only donated again. I'm not sure how it would work to decide who would donate and receive, but it sounds like a good idea. Maybe have 3 volunteers to donate to 3 names picked out of a hat. Then, the next meeting, those who were donated to would be the donors.

 

[Labridaedicted]

I'm chatting w/ another member on fb right now and he suggested a coral donor program. where someone donates a coral to another member and that coral cannot be sold, but only donated again. I'm not sure how it would work to decide who would donate and receive, but it sounds like a good idea. Maybe have 3 volunteers to donate to 3 names picked out of a hat. Then, the next meeting, those who were donated to would be the donors.

One time we had everyone bring in a frag or two then draw numbers to see who got what. Problem with this is people end up with a lot of gsp, brown polyps, and xenia.

 

[john.m.cole3]

One time we had everyone bring in a frag or two then draw numbers to see who got what. Problem with this is people end up with a lot of gsp, brown polyps, and xenia.

There should be a rule against that. I've had people offer their rust colored palys and mushrooms to me. I back out of it by telling them that I like slower growing corals so my tank doesn't fill up too fast.

 

[kimwstockton]

A photography class. We had a lot of interest in photo editing apps "Snapseed" had a photographer in the club show us how to you snapseed to edit the photos to look like the actual coral in the tank.